Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (116 page)

As I have already argued, that is one reason why so many Germans genuinely – I believe wrongly – want to see Germany locked in to a federal Europe. In fact, Germany is more rather than less likely to dominate within that framework; for a reunited Germany is simply too big and powerful to be just another player. Moreover, Germany has always looked east as well as west, though it is economic expansion rather than territorial aggression which is the modern manifestation of this tendency. Germany is thus by its very nature a destabilizing force in Europe. Only the military and political engagement of the United States in Europe and close relations between the other two strongest sovereign states in Europe – Britain and France – are sufficient to balance German power: and nothing of the sort would be possible within a European super-state.

One obstacle to achieving such a balance of power when I was in office was the refusal of France under President Mitterrand to follow his and French instincts and challenge German interests. This would have required abandoning the Franco-German axis on which he had been relying and, as I shall describe, the wrench proved just too difficult for him.

Initially, it also seemed likely that the Soviets would be strongly opposed to the re-emergence of a powerful Germany. Of course, the Soviets might have calculated that a reunited Germany would return a left-of-centre government which would achieve their long-term objective of neutralizing and denuclearizing West Germany. (As it turned out – and perhaps with a clearer idea than we had of the true feelings of the East German people – the Soviets were prepared to sell reunification for a modest financial boost from Germany to their crumbling economy.)

These matters were at the forefront of my mind when I decided to arrange a stopover visit in Moscow for talks with Mr Gorbachev on my way back from the IDU Conference in Tokyo in September 1989.

In Moscow Mr Gorbachev and I talked frankly about Germany. I explained to him that although NATO had traditionally made statements supporting Germany’s aspiration to be reunited, in practice we were rather apprehensive. Nor was I speaking for myself alone – I had
discussed it with at least one other western leader, meaning but not mentioning President Mitterrand. Mr Gorbachev confirmed that the Soviet Union did not want German reunification either. This reinforced me in my resolve to slow up the already heady pace of developments. Of course, I did not want East Germans to have to live under communism. But it seemed to me that a truly democratic East Germany would soon emerge and that the question of reunification was a separate one on which the wishes and interests of Germany’s neighbours and other powers must be fully taken into account.

To begin with the West Germans seemed to be willing to do this. Chancellor Kohl telephoned me on the evening of Friday 10 November after his visit to Berlin and as demolition of the Berlin Wall began. He was clearly buoyed up by the scenes he had witnessed: what German would not have been? I advised him to keep in touch with Mr Gorbachev who would obviously be very concerned with what was happening. He promised to do so. Later that night the Soviet Ambassador came to see me with a message from Mr Gorbachev who was worried that there might occur some incident – perhaps an attack on Soviet soldiers in East Germany or Berlin – which could have momentous consequences.

However, instead of seeking to rein back expectations, Chancellor Kohl was soon busily raising them. In a statement to the Bundestag he said that the core of the German question was freedom and that the people of East Germany must be given the chance to decide their own future and needed no advice from others. That went for the ‘question of reunification and for German unity too’. The tone had already begun to change and it would change further.

This was the background to President Mitterrand’s calling a special meeting of Community heads of government in Paris to consider what was happening in Germany – where Egon Krenz, the new East German leader who was, the Soviets had told me, a protégé of Mr Gorbachev, was looking precarious. Before I went I sent a message to President Bush reiterating my view that the priority should be to see genuine democracy established in East Germany and that German reunification was not something to be addressed at present. The President later telephoned me to thank me for my message with which he agreed and to say how much he was looking forward to the two of us ‘putting our feet up at Camp David for a really good talk’.

Almost equally amiable was the Paris meeting on the evening of Saturday 18 November. President Mitterrand opened by posing a number of
questions, including whether the issue of borders in Europe should be open for discussion. Then Chancellor Kohl began. He said that people wanted ‘to hear Europe’s voice’. He then obliged by speaking for forty minutes. He concluded by saying that there should be no discussion of borders but that the people of Germany must be allowed to decide their future for themselves. After Sr González had intervened to no great effect, I spoke.

I said that though the changes taking place were historic we must not succumb to euphoria. It would take several years to get genuine democracy and economic reform in eastern Europe. There must be no question of changing borders. The Helsinki Final Act must apply.
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Any attempt to talk about either border changes or German reunification would undermine Mr Gorbachev and open up a Pandora’s box of border claims right through central Europe. I said that we must keep both NATO and the Warsaw Pact intact to create a background of stability.

The following Friday – 24 November – I was discussing the same issues at Camp David with President Bush – though not exactly ‘with my feet up’. Although friendly enough, the President seemed uneasy. I reiterated much of what I had said in Paris about borders and reunification and of the need to support the Soviet leader on whose continuance in power so much depended. The President asked me pointedly whether my line had given rise to difficulties with Chancellor Kohl and about my attitude to the European Community. It was also clear that we differed on the priority which still needed to be given to defence spending. The President told me about the budgetary difficulties he faced and argued that if conditions in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had really changed, there must surely be scope for the West to cut its defence spending. I said that there would always remain the unknown threat which must be guarded against. Defence spending was like home insurance in this respect. You did not stop paying the premiums because your street was free from burglaries for a time. I thought that the US defence budget should be driven not by Mr Gorbachev and his initiatives but by the United States’
defence interests. The atmosphere did not improve as a result of our discussions.

Shortly after my return to Britain I learned that, in clear breach of at least the spirit of the Paris summit, Chancellor Kohl had set out in a speech to the Bundestag a ‘ten-point’ plan about Germany’s future. The fifth point was the proposal of the development of ‘confederative structures between the two states in Germany with the goal of creating a federation’. The tenth point was that his Government was working towards ‘unity, reunification, the reattainment of German state unity’.

The real question now was how the Americans would react. I did not have to wait long to find out. In a press conference briefing Jim Baker spelt out the American approach to German reunification which, he said, would be based on four principles. Self-determination would be pursued ‘without prejudice to its outcome’. Another element was that Germany should not only remain in NATO – with which I heartily agreed – but that it should be part of ‘an increasingly integrated European Community’ – with which I did not. The third point was that moves to unification should be peaceful, gradual and part of a step-by-step process. I entirely agreed with the final point – that the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, particularly as they related to borders, must be supported. What remained to be seen, however, was whether the Americans were going to give most weight to the notion of Germany’s future in an ‘integrated’ Europe or to the thought that reunification must only come about slowly and gradually.

It was left to President Bush himself to provide the answer in his speech at the NATO heads of government meeting staged at Brussels in early December to hear his report on his talks with Mr Gorbachev in Malta. He made a carefully prepared statement on Europe’s ‘future architecture’, calling for a ‘new, more mature relationship’ with Europe. He also restated the principles Jim Baker had laid out as regards reunification. But the fact that the President placed such emphasis on ‘European integration’ was immediately taken as a signal that he was aligning America with the federalist rather than my ‘Bruges’ goal of European development. There was no reason for journalists to take the President’s remarks otherwise. The President telephoned me to explain his remarks and say that they just related to the Single Market rather than wider political integration. I hoped that they did – or that at least from now on they would. The fact remained that there was nothing I could expect from the Americans as regards slowing down German reunification – and possibly much I would wish to avoid as regards the drive towards European unity.

If there was any hope now of stopping or slowing down reunification it would only come from an Anglo-French initiative. Yet even were President Mitterrand to try to give practical effect to what I knew were his secret fears, we would not find many ways open to us.

At the Strasbourg European Council in December 1989 President Mitterrand and I had two private meetings to discuss the German problem. He was very critical of Chancellor Kohl’s ‘ten-point’ plan. He observed that in history the Germans were a people in constant movement and flux. At this I produced from my handbag a map showing the various configurations of Germany in the past, which were not altogether reassuring about the future. We talked through what precisely we might do. I said that at the meeting he had chaired in Paris we had come up with the right answer on borders and reunification. But President Mitterrand observed that Chancellor Kohl had already gone far beyond that. He said that at moments of great danger in the past France had always established special relations with Britain and he felt that such a time had come again. We must draw together and stay in touch. It seemed to me that although we had not discovered the means, at least we both had the will to check the German juggernaut. That was a start.

Almost all the discussion I had with President Mitterrand at the Elysée Palace on Saturday 20 January 1990 concerned Germany. Picking up the President’s remarks in the margins of Strasbourg I said that it was very important for Britain and France to work out jointly how to handle what was happening in Germany. East Germany seemed close to collapse and it was by no means impossible that we would be confronted in the course of this year with the decision in principle in favour of reunification. The President was clearly irked by German attitudes and behaviour. He accepted that the Germans had the right to self-determination but they did not have the right to upset the political realities of Europe; nor could he accept that German reunification should take priority over everything else. He complained that the Germans treated any talk of caution as criticism of themselves. Unless you were whole-heartedly for reunification, you were described as an enemy of Germany. The trouble was that in reality there was no force in Europe which could stop reunification happening. He was at a loss as to what we could do. I argued that we should at least make use of all the means available to slow down reunification. The trouble was that other governments were not ready to speak up openly – nor, I might have added but did not, were the French. President Mitterrand went on to say that he shared my worries about the
Germans’ so-called ‘mission’ in central Europe. The Czechs, Poles and Hungarians would not want to be under Germany’s exclusive influence, but they would need German aid and investment. I said that we must not just accept that the Germans had a particular hold over these countries, but rather do everything possible to expand our own links there. We agreed that our Foreign and Defence ministers should get together to talk over the issue of reunification and also examine the scope for closer Franco-British defence co-operation.

In February Chancellor Kohl – again without any consultation with his allies – went to Moscow and won from Mr Gorbachev agreement that ‘the unity of the German nation must be decided by the Germans themselves’. (The
quid pro quo
would soon become clear. In July, at a meeting in the Crimea, the West German Chancellor agreed to provide what must have seemed to the Soviets a huge sum, though they could have extracted much more, to cover the costs of providing for the Soviet troops who would be withdrawn from East Germany. For his part, Mr Gorbachev now finally agreed in public that the reunified Germany should be part of NATO.)

On Saturday 24 February I had a three-quarters-of-an-hour telephone conversation with President Bush. I broke with my usual habit of trying to avoid detailed factual discussions over the telephone and tried to explain to the President how I thought we should be thinking about the future of a western alliance and a Europe which contained a reunified Germany. I stressed the importance of ensuring that a united Germany stayed within NATO and that United States troops remained there. However, if all Soviet forces had to leave East Germany that would cause difficulties for Mr Gorbachev and I thought it best to allow some to stay for a transitional period without any specific terminal date. I also said that we must strengthen the CSCE framework, which would not only help avoid Soviet isolation but would help balance German dominance in Europe. One had to remember that Germany was surrounded by countries most of which it had attacked or occupied in the course of this century. Looking well into the future, only the Soviet Union – or its successor – could provide such a balance. President Bush, as I afterwards learnt, failed to understand that I was discussing a long-term balance of power in Europe rather than proposing an alternative alliance to NATO. It was the last time that I relied on a telephone conversation to explain such matters.